With this newest set of testing being announced I have started to think more about what we as PVPers are looking for. How many of us have been in a fight where we were hit by some CC and had the stamina to break free but couldn't? How many of us have been in combat, needed that heal from rally or vigor but because the skill was delayed we lost the fight? Pretty much all of us have experienced these or similar experiences on multiple occasions. These performance issues took away our ability to play this game at it's core. Often times we can't LA weave, CCs take forever to deal with and often times we are left in a state where we can't do anything but sit and die.

So what have the tests given us? They have given us better performance is some cases, often times not, but they give us or at least aim to give us the ability to preform actions. However with them comes a cost we lose our ability to use AOEs effectively. We lose a core aspect of what made ESO's combat glorious.

What changes in ZOS's approach have we seen? A general nerfing of survivability, an overabundance of penetration and the rise of procs sets. These changes set the path to an ESO in which players die quicker, battles are shorter and hopefully it reduces the lag. But with the recent changes to debuffs/buffs they will no longer carry the same value they once did, we are seeing a switch in philosophy. Where before a lot of buffs were granted by sets, in particular with pvp healers/supports, we will now see damage & healing coming from sets. Abilities will no longer carry the same impact. They will be about either finish an enemy quickly or applying some buff/debuff. This change is both a blessing and curse, as it lowers the skill celling/brings ball groups in line but at the same time it takes away the core of what made most of us fall in love with ESO's combat. Which is how dynamic the combat is and the fact that if you know what you are doing you could do work with abilities. How many 1vx montages are there on youtube? How many ballgroups have spent hours trying to perfect the art of farming the top of keeps? How much dedication have players over the years show learning how to truly get the most out of this combat system?

In the end what we the players are looking for is no a departure from the core combat but rather a return to it. That means all of it. Now obviously there will have to be changes down the road. The game is at a point again where something needs to happen or it will only get worse. Instead of shifting combat towards proc sets, perhaps shift more towards delayed burst. Create more of a dynamic to the meta and to combat.

Ultimately even if ZOS does succeed in meeting their targets performance wise they still could lose their PVP base just from the fact that they altered combat way too much along the way. A lot of people have already started to take breaks from this game and more will follow. Those people could still come back but they won't if more isn't done to preserve the core of ESO combat.